


ceaselessly along dream paths

by Yatzuaka



Series: I have a feeling I will regret this [5]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-19 16:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4752425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yatzuaka/pseuds/Yatzuaka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hats yielded Angst + Pacific Rim.</p><p>A poem by Ono no Komachi, No. 658 in the Kokin Wakashu inspired this little plot bunny. </p><p>So did Charlie Hunnam's excellent ass :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	ceaselessly along dream paths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts on Mako and Raleigh.

Mako had barely had the chance to be a real pilot, had only properly drifted with Becket-san three times, and she much prefers to forget the first time, so technically twice?

She'd saved the world, at least that's what they told her. So much happiness, so much pride, so many words. Parties and celebrating and a rictus of a smile pasted on. Becket gone from her side, despite conventional wisdom that drift partners should stay together until the aftermath subsides. It's not by choice - he's injured. 

Mr. Hansen, she grew up in his sphere, knows his tells, his strengths, strategies and weaknesses. She knows his dog, the way he takes his coffee, butters his toast, his son. His sorrow. She knows that he tries to shield her and that's why she's still here in the increasingly empty Shatterdome.

She can't help but read the articles in the discarded papers, the reports in magazines left carelessly in the mess hall. Mako knows the moniker she'd gotten, Kengou, doesn't know who first said it, but it weighs so much. Expectations and adulation, and what had she actually done?

She'd not even been there at the end. She'd been ejected, evacuated, she had floated easily to safety. Alone. 

Now that the first week of the stopped clock was over, Mako felt rudderless. She'd had goals, things to accomplish, skills to master, but what was there to do now? Even her co-pilot was out of her reach, out of her head, stuck with beeping machines and dripping IV bags and doctors. 

Mako wants more than anything to go home, but she learns every day, in a thousand different ways, that her home was sensei. It has never been a place - it has always been people. Once a pair, matched perfectly, her parents, crushed by Tokyo's fall, ground to dust, never found, but counted among many. Now, a man lost at the bottom of an ocean, blown to bits by a nuclear warhead, torn to shreds by the thing that had already killed him before... She knows now the diagnosis he'd kept from her, counted the bloody handkerchiefs, still spotted brown after being washed, ironed and packed away carefully. 

The activities that occupy her time exhaust her physically. It's not enough sometimes, most times. So much to study and store, even more to throw away. She's formed so many cardboard boxes from the flat templates that she does it automatically, brain disengaged. It's rather like a kata now, a form of movement deeply ingrained. Occasionally she loses herself in the rhythm of folds she thought of as useful origami.

She misses her staff, Mako misses sweating, but she can't bear to miss anything else because her mind might wander, and she might remember everything else that's gone. 

A week without mooring and the quiet hum of the Dome drives her out of her uncomfortable bunk, out of her tiny room. She's got socks on, her tank, her combat pants. Mako runs and doesn't make a sound. Boots might've been a good idea, but the silence drives her out before she even realizes it. 

Not that it matters either way, she's not going outside and the detritus of the Hangar floor has been swept up. The screws and nuts and bolts, the titanium flotsam and iron jetsam, the spare parts and disembodied motors and chains that had littered the staging area have been picked up, put away. There's no more Jaegers, anyway. Her dream, her one purpose, as far away as it had ever been -

Mako sits high above, where she used to look out in anticipation of the day that had already come and gone. Gypsy Danger. Her pride, her joy, her life. She tries again to be glad that they aren't even needed anymore.

She cries in the scaffolding, in the empty spaces between where her dreams once lived.

She doesn't notice the unsteady tap-tap-tapping of hard soled boots on smooth concrete or the squeal of metal braces rubbing together. 

Mako has very close to perfect recall, a blessing when it comes to inventory. Not so much for everything else. She recognizes his smell first. The cadence of his breath next. The space he occupies in her brain, still. 

He doesn't touch her, he doesn't try to comfort her. He just sits there until she's even emptier than she was before. 

She scrubs callused hands over her face. "I miss sensei."

"I miss my brother."

"I want to go home." Mako's fingers curl through the grate they're sitting on and she kicks her feet a little. She won't look at him, she can't look at him. The distance is not enough and too much, and the metal hurts her joints as she squeezes.

"I know," Raleigh Beckett says, and the words echo.

* * *

She walks slowly, feeling worse than she did after -


End file.
